When cleaning fabric surfaces, often times mechanical vacuum cleaning devices are utilized in order to effectively remove dirt, dust, and other debris from the fabric surface. However, due to the often large and cumbersome construction of these types of mechanical vacuum fabric cleaning devices, these devices are often not suitable for use in certain situations where the fabric surface to be cleaned is relatively small, or is positioned in a difficult to access location. In addition, for various instances of spot cleaning certain fabric surfaces, a large mechanical cleaning device is often impractical for the particular cleaning task.
Therefore, in order to provide a lightweight cleaning device that can be utilized as an alternative to larger mechanical vacuum cleaning devices for these types of situations, various types of alternative cleaning devices and brushes have been developed. For example, Tsuruzawa U.S. Pat. No. 3,747,152 discloses a cleaning brush with dust removing and collection means. The device includes a rotatable or slidable brush that is mounted to a housing which can be grasped by an individual to move the brush across a surface to be cleaned. The movable brush is formed with a number of bristles which are oriented generally oppositely to bristles on a pair of brush members disposed on the housing surrounding the brush. The bristles on the movable brush pick up dirt from the surface by contacting the dirt as the brush is moved across the surface. The bristles then rotate into engagement with the bristles on the brush members in the housing to dislodge the dirt from the movable brush. The dirt and dust dislodged by the brush members is then collected within the movable brush opposite the bristles for later removal through an opening in the housing to which the movable brush is mounted.
However, this device has certain shortcomings in that the ability of the brush to effectively retain any dirt, dust or other debris picked up by the movable brush is determined by the contact of the bristles on the brush with the bristles of the brush members. Because the movable brush necessarily has to move into contact with the brush members from the exterior of the device, the brush can dislodge the dirt, dust and other debris from the movable brush before the dirt is located within the brush housing. Furthermore, for that component of the dirt, dust and other debris that is actually contained within the housing as a result of the proper operation of the device, the debris must be dispensed by inverting the device and shaking the housing such that the debris moves through an opening in the housing, which is a highly inefficient manner to remove the dirt from the device.
Therefore, it is desirable to develop a lightweight, manually operable fabric surface cleaning or sweeping device that engages dirt, dust and other debris picked up off of a fabric surface in a manner which more effectively removes the debris from the surface and deposits this debris within a collection chamber positioned in the device. Further, it is also desirable to develop a fabric cleaning device in which the dust or debris collected by the device can be more easily dispensed of using the separate collection chamber.